Coffee Grounds Question

[buckwheat]

How can one use coffee grounds in garden? I can get quite a lot of coffee grounds from Starbucks, about 5 Gallon pail a day if I can use it. I have a 1500 Sq Foot vegetable garden and I live in Central Michigan. The soil in my garden is neutral to slightly acidic. I do add organic stuff to the soil every year. Just a couple of months ago I tilled in some horse manure. Not sure if taking the coffee grounds is a good or bad idea at this point, but I have read that it is a good source of nitrogen and other nutrients

I was considering composting the grounds and looking at one web site that says mix 4 parts brown material to 1 part green (coffee grounds) .......another says to mix equal parts brown and green. One says coffee grounds are very acidic and the other says they can vary from slightly alkaline to slightly acidic.

One web site says that a good option is to spread about an inch over an an area then till into soil and that the grounds do a good job of conditioning the soil and break down slowly. Another says never spread grounds in garden they are way to acidic and must be composted first.

Right now the coffee grounds are going into trash. and is just a short distance from me.

I am thinking of taking them and dumping into a pile, then spread it and till it in in the spring.

[JeÃƒà ¸us]

In your situation, I'd certainly take their coffee grounds, especially if you can get '5 gallons' per day. Coffee grounds are neutral, PH-wise, so you could either apply it directly to the garden or add it to your compost (I'd probably do the latter if I had lots of coffee grounds)

[Fran Farmer]

Worms like it when I've put a msall amount regulalry into my worm farm. If they like it, then I'm sure it's be great spread right round the garden on anything that doesn't have a reputation for being delicate or needs cossetting.

[songbird]

if they give you a bucket a day i'd take them just for that reason alone. :) good buckets are nice to have...

if you are going to use them by tilling in then i'd do it ASAP while we have some nice weather and they can start decomposing.

if you are going to use them as a surface mulch (say like around blueberry bushes) you can use them any time.

the point being that any temporary decrease in nutrients (mainly nitrogen) from decomposition will mostly be over with by the time things warm up and you plant in the spring.

if you have a compost pile it's a good thing to run them through that before using them as a till in amendment because then you avoid the temporary nutrient drain.

that many sq ft can likely use a lot of buckets depending upon what type of soil you already have and it's condition.

if you have a lot of clay then i'd use more grounds. if you have poor soil with mostly sand i'd add some clay along with the coffee grounds (you don't need much to make a lot of difference).

songbird (also in mid-michigan

[Brooklyn1]

I've been using all my household coffee grounds in my garden for more than fifty years but I compost it along with the paper filters and all other compostibles. A five gallon bucketful is a lot of grounds, I probably don't have much more than that from home in a year, I only brew ten cups a day. My vegetable garden is 2,500 sq ft, I would definitely use that five gallon bucketful of grounds a day in my garden, but I would compost them first... I'd probably just dump them in a pile in a wooded area to compost and shovel them up as needed. I'd be a sin to let them go into the trash, even if you didn't have a vegetable garden they'd make great weed blocking mulch around trees, shrubs, and in flower beds, and can only improve your soil. You live too far from upstate NY or I'd be thrilled to take those grounds off your hands... you literally have a gardener's brown gold mine.

[buckwheat]

Well I picked up first coffee grounds today, and it was a pretty good amount and very clean, they gave me about 35 or 40 lbs of what looks like dozens of miniature hockey pucks made of compressed coffee grounds.